Ivan Antonovich Kocherga

Born Sept. 24 (Oct. 6). 1881, in Nosovka, near Nezhin; died Dec. 29, 1952, in Kiev. Soviet Ukrainian playwright; Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR (1950).

Kocherga graduated from the law department of Kiev University in 1903. His Song in a Goblet (Russian translation, 1910; performed, 1926; published, 1956), a dramatic fairy tale on medieval themes, is permeated with faith in the beneficent power of poetry over the human heart. The drama The Diamond Millstone (1927) and the dramatic poem Svichka’s Marriage (1931) praise the spiritual beauty and courage of the people struggling for freedom. The fairy-tale-play Marko in Hell (performed in 1928) affirms the heroic nature of the revolution. In the philosophical comedy The Watchmaker and the Hen (or The Craftsmen of Time-, published, 1934) fighters for the revolutionary transformation of the world act as the original “craftsmen of time,” who know how to use time for creative activity. In a number of plays on contemporary topics (He Who Goes Doesn’t Return, 1936; The Name, 1937; Anatomy Exam, 1940; and Night Alarm, 1943), Kocherga came out against the limitations of the middle class and for the high ideals of communist ethics, for trusting mankind, and for inculcating a sense of social duty.

Kocherga is the author of the dramatic poem laroslav the Wise (1946, performed in the T. G. Shevchenko Kharkov Dramatic Theater; State Prize of the USSR, 1948), the drama Truth (1947), and the dramatic poem The Prophet (1948, published posthumously). He was awarded two orders and a medal.